Long before President Trump, the U.S. government had made a mockery of “human rights,” condemning abuses by adversary states but silent when crimes were committed by U.S. agents or U.S. allies, explains Todd E. Pierce.
Tag: Guantanamo Bay Prison
Abu Zubaydah: Torture’s ‘Poster Child’
Exclusive: The ugly legacy of George W. Bush’s torture program continues to haunt U.S. foreign policy as the “poster child” for waterboarding, Abu Zubaydah, makes an appeal for his release from Guantanamo, writes Marjorie Cohn.
Mystery of a Little-Known Gitmo Prisoner
President Obama vowed to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but has struggled against congressional resistance and a slow-moving review process, exemplified by the strange case of Haroon al-Afghani, reports Dennis J Bernstein.
The Catch-22 of Closing Gitmo
President Obama’s plan to close Guantanamo – even if it could be implemented – would still leave several dozen detainees in the legal limbo as “non-releasable,” albeit inside U.S. prisons, as Helen Schietinger explains.
Challenging US Overseas Military Bases
Though the U.S. government denies that it runs an empire, it maintains a bristling global network of military bases unprecedented in world history, including some where the population strenuously protests the presence, as retired Col. Ann Wright noted in a…
Shocked over Senate’s Gitmo Rhetoric
A citizen who attended a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing about Guantanamo Bay was so shocked by the ugly rhetoric from some senators that she spoke up and was arrested. Now in an open letter, Helen Schietinger is asking Sen.…
A Murder Mystery at Guantanamo Bay
Exclusive: America’s plunge into the “dark side” last decade created a hidden history of shocking brutality, including torture and homicides, that the U.S. government would prefer to keep secret, even though many of the perpetrators are out of office, writes…
Guantanamo’s Force-Feeding Challenged
Exclusive: In the Kafkaesque world of Guantanamo, even inmates cleared for release are held indefinitely and if they try to kill themselves via hunger strikes are brutally force-fed to keep them alive. Finally, a U.S. court is confronting whether the force-feeding…
Selective Outrage over Ukraine POWs
Exclusive: The U.S. news media regularly engages in selective outrage, piously denouncing some adversary for violating international law yet hypocritically silent when worse abuses are committed by the U.S. or allied governments, as the New York Times has shown again,…
Doubting Obama’s Resolve to Do Right
From the Archive: As President Obama prepares to make another speech explaining his foreign policy, the question is whether he can climb out of the rut of his previous whiny apologies for continuing many of George W. Bush’s abuses, as ex-CIA analyst…